• Today's Word

Lachrymose

🔊 Listen to the word Lachrymose

LAK-rih-mohs

Definition

(adjective) Tending to cry easily or frequently; having a mournful or tearful quality that evokes sadness.

Example

The lachrymose eulogy left barely a dry eye in the room, not because it was maudlin but because every word of it was simply and devastatingly true.

Word Origin

Lachrymose derives from the Latin lacrima, meaning “tear,” which itself traces back to the Greek dakryma. The same root gives us lachrymal — the medical term for the tear ducts and glands responsible for producing tears — making lachrymose one of the rare words that bridges everyday emotion and clinical anatomy in a single syllable. It entered English in the 17th century, used initially in literary and poetic contexts to describe writing or music with an overwhelming quality of sadness.

Fun Fact

The ancient Romans took tears seriously enough to collect them. Small glass vessels called lacrimatoria — tear bottles — were placed in tombs alongside the deceased, believed to contain the tears of mourners as a final gift to the dead. Archaeologists have recovered thousands of these small bottles across the former Roman Empire, their presence in burial sites considered evidence of genuine grief rather than ritual obligation. The practice was so widespread and so culturally significant that it gave the Latin word for tears — lacrima — an enduring presence in the language, eventually producing both the medical terminology for your tear ducts and the word you’d use to describe a particularly devastating film.